Friday Filler! The Sookie Stackhouse Edition!

I ride the bus to and from work most days, and one of my amusements is to try and see what my fellow passengers are reading during the commute. Usually there are at least half a dozen readers visible (not counting people nodding over their iPhones and iPads and knookles). This morning, though, I saw nobody reading except for one woman, a few seats away from me, who was finishing up a Sookie Stackhouse book. She was reading it in hard cover. Possibly it was a library edition; I'm not sure.

Like I say, nobody else on the bus seemed to be reading anything. Not even me (I have a copy of Great Expectations with me), though I kept telling myself that I was going to pull out my book and read. The thing is, it's a cold day in the Pacific Northwest. The guy on the radio said it was 33° when I was leaving the house, and the whole city was covered in frost. The buses are barely warmer than the outside world (thanks, Metro!) and so it was just too darned cold to read this morning.

Except for that one woman with her Sookie Stackhouse novel. So apparently (and yes, I know it's poor science to draw a conclusion from a single case), if you're cold, you should read a book by Charlaine Harris.

Or stay off the Seattle public transit system.

Also, this will be a glorious three-day weekend for many Americans as we celebrate the Feast of Saint Martin Luther King on Monday. I work at a major university and every year a few days are given over to recognize the transformative power St Martin had on civil rights. There is a marble plinth about four feet high (that's a good bit over a metre, you metric folks) with a bronze bust of MLK atop it. You can look right into his eye if you're my height. This bust on a plinth is brought out every year into the lobby for the Feast of Saint Martin Luther King and for a few days the bronze head watches the comings and goings of all who pass. And then, after the official holiday ends, he's carted back to wherever he spends the majority of the year. So I must ask: where does bronze MLK live all year? In a coat closet in the Dean's office? In a specially built crate like an Egyptian sarcophagus? I have no idea and I never wondered until this morning when I crossed through the lobby on my way to the espresso cart downstairs. But I'll find out, I will.

If you have a three-day weekend, I hope you do something fun and cool with it. If you don't have a three-day weekend, I hope you still have fun and are cool, though not so cold that you can't read whatever it is you'd prefer to read. Unless, of course, what you prefer to read is Sookie.